Tavern Watch Podcast: Taking turns in the (tabletop) dungeon

Keeping things tense and exciting in tabletop games without just resorting to throwing the players into a fight is a central part of our discussion today on Tavern Watch — we’re talking torches burning down in Shadowdark or Crows, using the spotlight like a TV show director to keep things tense in Monster of the Week, or the Chaos mechanic in Triangle Agency that makes every roll a balancing act. Do you really want to let the director get enough Chaos to flat-out kill an agent?

Before we even broach that idea, though, we have so many upcoming games to talk about. We can’t help ourselves! There’s EN World’s most anticipated games of 2026, of course — we’re all especially anxious to see #10, the Legend of Zelda and Dragon Quest-inspired Twilight Sword, do well — as well as a number of Kickstarters; everything from the Dungeon Death zine, a 90s video-game-based isekai “setting” for Shadowdark to the Dark Matter Mega Box that gives the deluxe treatment to the 5E science fantasy setting (and includes a crossover with cutesy animal setting Humblewood by way of firing one of its cities into space).

If you’re interested in something closer to the games you’re more familiar with, you might want to try some new mystical classes for D&D 5E, check out Paizo’s upcoming releases for Pathfinder including the return of four fan-favorite 1st Edition classes, or kick back and watch a Baldur’s Gate TV show on HBO…. someday. Or you can be like Liz and continue vibrating excitedly over the idea that the Fallen London TTRPG might make it into your hands this year. You never know!

You can listen to the podcast directly from this post or click on download icon in the upper right corner of the player below to listen on your own device.

Music from this episode is “Midnight Tale” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.

For more Tavern Watch, check out all of our recent episodes! We do actual plays of a wide range of games as well as a monthly episode on tabletop news, just like this one. Listen to our latest games in the playlist below, and subscribe if you want to keep up with our gaming exploits.

If you want to subscribe, click the plus icon in the player above or search for Tavern Watch on your podcast platform of choice, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. You can also catch up on our other podcasts on our podcast page. And if you subscribe to our Patreon Tier 2 or above you can listen to our podcasts early and ad-free, as well as get the uncut Blizzard Watch Podcast with bonus pre-show content.

Thanks for your support and enjoy the show!